Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 12:47:13 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Crosby <crosby_m-AT-rocketmail.com>
Subject: Re: Ecosemiotics [was: God help us, back to...]


---<P.Bains-AT-murdoch.edu.au> wrote:
> >Mark (baffled by smoke and mirrors)
> You're not that 'baffled'. 

"Smoke and mirrors" are symbols I have been using
lately when trying to understand how we filter the
world with theory and representation.  Usually I have
in mind objectivist theories and the problem with
consciousness as representation (uppercase Self) that
I have begun to scentse and reflect on, pretty
sporadically, from _Difference and Repetition_ and
_Logic of Sense_.

Of course, there's another way to look at these
symbols, something like Deleuze's "ideal game" in the
tenth series of _Logic of Sense_:

"... a nomadic and non-sedentary distribution,
wherein each system of singularities communicates and
resonates with the others, being at once implicated
by the others and implicating them ... It is the game
of problems and of the question, no longer the game
of the categorical and the hypothetical" (p60).

Or, the "two-fold dismissal of height and depth to
the advantage of the surface ... the adventure of Zen
-- against the Brahman depths and the Buddhist
heights" (p136, tenth series on humor).

But, as we like to say, I'm sure you already know this.

> What have you read of Deely's work?

Nada. But now that I check out Deely titles at
Amazon, I imagine some of the interesting Scholastic
citations you've made in various posts might be
inspired by Deely's _New Beginnings_. I also notice
Robert Corrington's _Ecstatic Naturalism_, for which
Deely wrote a foreword (and which seems to tie in
with Kristeva, whom I have heard mentioned on this
list but otherwise know nothing about.) The table of
contents of this latter are also available, and they
look fascinating...

> what do you understand by ontological semiosis, mon
ami? It's fun to try...

Dare I try some 'enculage' ? perhaps abductive
multiloguing is a nicer term!

The following excerpts are from Kalevi Kull,
"Organism as a Self-reading Text: Anticipation and
Semiosis", available at
http://www.zbi.ee/~kalevi/textorg.htm :

"An organism could be viewed as a set of texts, which
are translating each other and as a result building
new texts... Consequently, organism is a self-reading
text...

"The basic process of life could be defined as a
cycle of interlinked processes, consisting of texts
producing other texts through the processes of
recognition and translation...

"Recognition also means distinguishing between some
patterns, or categories. This means that in order for
anything to be recognized (or, to be a sign),
categorisation must already have taken place. Thus, a
sign, as something to be recognized, is not such an
elementary of simple notion".

Kull goes on to describe "a simple model" of 'texts'
interacting with and translating each other and how
the resulting distribution "is moving towards a state
consisting of one or more peaks, separated by
hiatuses" such that "the absolute positions of peaks
are not predetermined by the initial conditions, and
are drifting. The peaks of this model will be called
categories".

Deleuze would probably prefer to call these
singularities...

Well, there's much more to this and I don't have time
to relate this to recent discussion of "The Empty
Square", as I'd like, but perhaps you can see some
relations... Mark

_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free -AT-yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com